The World War 1 Lesson Trump Should Keep in Mind as He Heads Off to His First NATO Summit

President
Donald Trump’s oft-reported criticisms of NATO and his concern that
the European members of the alliance are not contributing enough has
sparked growing concern across the Atlantic for the future of western
military cooperation. NATO, which has been the bedrock of western
strategy since the opening phases of the Cold War, now looks
increasingly besieged and strategically confused. Notwithstanding
some recent reassurances from the White House on the enduring
importance of allied cooperation, the outlook is unlikely to improve
radically in the near future, given the profound differences of
opinion between the Trump administration and European leaders over a
host of issues, including migration, terrorism, Russia, and Turkey.

The
challenges of alliance cohesion, burden sharing, and strategic
outlook are not new. One hundred years ago, the western allies in
World War 1 – Britain, France, Italy, Belgium and their respective
empires, alongside the United States – faced the real prospect of
defeat to the Central Powers of Germany, Austro-Hungary and the
Ottoman Empire. By the end of 1916, heavy fighting on the Western
Front had not produced victory, only scores of casualties, and a
growing frustration at how long such an enormous war effort could be
sustained. Germany’s declaration of unrestricted submarine warfare
in January 1917 only added to these concerns and brought up the
prospect that Britain, the lynchpin of the alliance, could be starved
or blockaded out of the war.

What
then were the allies to do?
At a major meeting of allied commanders in December 1916, the French
had agreed to mount a major attack in April 1917, preceded by
preliminary attacks at Arras led by the British Expeditionary Force.
Once German units had been engaged, the major blow, along the Chemin
des Dames, would usher in the final defeat of the German Army. Yet
the French attack (what was known as the Nivelle Offensive) met with
disaster and within days of its commencement, French troops had
encountered fierce resistance and failed to make significant ground.
After suffering heavy losses, French Army morale began to crumble;
some divisions refused orders and others slipped into mutiny and
defeatism.

Allied
strategy increasingly began to diverge as the extent of the disaster
became apparent. Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, Commander-in-Chief
of the British Expeditionary Force, had never been the warmest
supporter of the spring offensive (he had only been dragooned into it
after repeated threats by the British Prime Minister, David Lloyd
George) and now took his chance. He believed that the Allies needed a
clear-cut victory more than ever and wanted to free the Belgian coast
from German occupation and to deliver a mortal blow to the German war
effort.

While
Haig was correct to identify Flanders as vital ground, the decision
to mount a major offensive in the late summer of 1917 was not
universally supported and brought to a head growing differences in
the alliance over strategy. The new French commander, Philippe
Pétain, was lukewarm, warning Haig that success was unlikely and
that, in any case, the French Army was fragile and could not be
committed to major offensive operations in the near future. “We
must wait for the tanks and the Americans,” he said – hoping that
the US declaration of war on Germany (which was announced on April 6,
1917) would swiftly result in significant US combat forces on the
Western Front. But Haig ignored Petain’s warnings.

Haig
viewed the situation quite clearly. For him, however difficult things
became for the allies, it merely underscored the need for a decisive
military victory in France and Belgium. Pétain, who took a more
pessimistic view, saw an urgent need to rest, recuperate and re-fight
the war in 1918 when – it was assumed – American strength would
be the deciding factor. But there was no unified Allied command; no
singular voice of strategic advice for the governments of Europe and
America; no Generalissimo.
The result was the Third Battle of Ypres, when Haig’s forces became
bogged down (quite literally) in one of the most murderous and awful
struggles of the twentieth century.

The
story of Passchendaele was not all mud and blood. To be fair to
Haig’s forces, they fought the battle with a great deal of courage
and most notably in September and October 1917, increasingly
effective ‘bite and hold’ operations that proved devastating to
German morale. Yet no decisive victory followed, leaving the Allies
at a strategic dead end, weakened by infighting and basic
disagreements over strategy. With the collapse of the Eastern Front
and the likelihood that revolution in Russia would allow the Central
Powers to redeploy significant amounts of combat power to the West,
having a clear and unified allied plan was more important than ever.

Ultimately
1917 marked the most difficult year of the war for the western
allies, where they came close to the limits of their endurance. The
US declaration of war was the only highpoint from a series of major
setbacks and strategic reverses that threatened to bring the war to a
disastrous conclusion. While victory may never have been achievable
at this time, there seems little doubt that Allied confusion over
strategy, with the British and French fighting their own wars,
contributed to the failure to concentrate force and make the most of
their combined military power.

This
was especially evident at Third Ypres. Beforehand David Lloyd George,
had warned Haig about facing the might of the German Army with what
was essentially a single army group and sustaining heavy losses
without result. While he should have done more to stop the offensive,
or at least guide it more effectively, he was correct in warning of
the consequences of discrete and unsupported activity that was not
part of a major combined effort. To his credit, he spent most of the
year trying to work on proposals for better coordination, but it was
not until the spring of 1918, and under the imminent threat of an
allied collapse, that unified command was eventually achieved with
the appointment of Ferdinand Foch as Allied Generalissimo.

Third
Ypres is a warning to history of what happens when coalitions stop
speaking to one another and the members “do their own thing.”
Donald Trump would be advised to remember it.